Local Nashville politics and family political leanings

Seigenthaler discusses his awareness of Nashville politics as he grew up during the late 1920s and 1930s. In particular, Seigenthaler discusses the role of Edward Hull "Boss" Crump of Memphis in Nashville politics, focusing especially on his uncle's interactions with him. Seigenthaler offers several anecdotes regarding the political beliefs of his grandfather and his uncle, noting that his own parents tended to stay out of politics while simultaneously instilling in him progressive views.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with John Seigenthaler, December 24 and 26, 1974. Interview A-0330. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

Well, my grandfather . . . and we lived during one period with him, was
intimately involved with local politics, really up to his ass in it. But
. . . it was always local politics. I remember my grandmother‚Äîmy
mother's mother‚Äîsaying that on election night she used to worry about
him. He'd always put on his pistol and go out.

BILL FINGER:

Right here in Nashville?

JOHN SEIGENTHALER:

That's right. And he used to tell great stories about the old days in
politics. On my father's side, his brother, Louis, was the son-in-law of
Bill Jones, who was Nashville's agent of Boss Crump. So politics was
always there. Periodically, Uncle Louis' job with the state government
would come up for family discussion. Every election, Uncle Louis' job
was either in jeapordy or safe. He was either going to get promoted or
he was going to get fired, depending on how Crump did. And in those
days, Crump always did very well. I always was aware of politics at the
very base level.

BILL FINGER:

Having a job and that kind of thing?

JOHN SEIGENTHALER:

That kind of thing. Or literally running the town for four years, which I
always thought Bill Jones did. I mean, he was literally Boss Crump's
boss in town.

BILL FINGER:

Crump controlled Nashville?

JOHN SEIGENTHALER:

Yes, Crump controlled much of Nashville politics through Bill Jones. And
usually, they won. Later on, Uncle Louis had a tough time with his job.
As a matter of fact, when I came here as editor in 1962, he was working
in our press room. As a boy he had started out in the press room, and
that's where he died. He came to see me and asked if he could come back,
he still held his union card. Uncle Walter was circulation director and
he and I were both helpful to Uncle Louis, and he came back.

JIM TRAMEL:

So your sense of politics was more local than state?

JOHN SEIGENTHALER:

By far. Another thing that stands out in my mind going back: I remember
those conventions about Uncle Louis. I remember conversations with my
grandfather. My grandfather used to tell stories about how he was
helping some guy get elected county registrar or county trustee. He once
was helping a veterinarian named Boots Brown in a race for some office.
This was one of the great stories that he used to tell. He was helping
Boots. And they ran a man against Boots who didn't have any legs. He
told this story many times . . .
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My grandfather Brew's home place was right up here
at 12th and Broad just within two hundred yards from where we are
sitting in my office on the other side of the street. They had a parade
on election eve that came down Broad Street toward town. I guess that it
started right around here. And they put this fellow running against
Boots Brown up in a buggy. And they propped the stubs of his legs over
the edge of the buggy, and started down across the viaduct. And my
grandfather and Boots, the candidate, were standing in the background of
this crowd across the viaduct there. And my grandfather said, "Boots,
you are beaten. Your own mother wouldn't vote for you if she sees that
son-of-a-bitch like that." Well, I remember that story and I can recall
dozens of stories of his involvement in local politics. I remember that
he was involved in such things as getting people to pay their poll
taxes, or telling people that they should pay their poll taxes. He was
sort of a precinct politico for many years. By the time that I got old
enough to know anything about it, he had gotten older himself and was
out of a good deal of it. But again, it was all local and not state. One
of the other things that I remember . . . it's funny, the things that I
remember are things that come back to me as things that I'm proud to
remember about my family. My father was a contractor and he had a man
working for him named Gene Woodruff. And Gene Woodruff had a brother
named Horace Woodruff. I remember as a child, hearing around the
table that Horace was an animal. I didn't know what
that meant until suddenly, Horace killed a policeman named Mike
Mulvehill and was sentenced to go to the electric chair. I remember my
father and my grandfather and my Uncle Louis sitting down in the living
room, and I don't know where I was, but I was somewhere around there,
talking about arranging to go to see the governor to ask for Horace
Woodruff's life. They did do that and Horace Woodruff's life was spared.
Well, then a year or two later, he led a break in which three or four
people were killed. Another inmate, Lonnie Taylor had his arm shot off.
Again they went and again . . . they helped save him. Horace Woodruff
spent twelve years on death row after that. I became a reporter and got
involved in prison reform and went out there to do some stories. I had
been out there maybe six months doing stories and one day, I was going
through and the warden, a fellow named Droupie Edwards, said, "The
fellow who runs our radio shop would like to see you." I went into the
shop. He said, "I'm Horace Woodruff, your father helped save my life." I
became . . . an intimate friend of his. And later . . . I think that
without question he would say I was instrumental in getting him out on
parole. The cop's family opposed parole everytime
he came up. But Horace, in his late 50's, finally got out on parole. I
was editor at the time. I remember as a child hearing that story about
Horace Woodruff, the animal. I knew his brother, Gene. He was always
around our house. I remember that very well. You know, I am strongly
opposed to capital punishment and I don't know how much of it relates to
that experience. I'm relatively sure that my father was not against
capital punishment. I know that my mother was not against capital
punishment. But when it came to Gene Woodruff's brother, they wanted to
save him. They called him an animal before that.
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JIM TRAMEL:

It's interesting that you, as a liberal southern journalist, there was
nothing in your family background that would . . . the period that we
are talking about is the time when Kefauver was challenging McKellar and
Crump.

JOHN SEIGENTHALER:

Right. Before that, even.

JIM TRAMEL:

But your family, if anything, was on the other side.

JOHN SEIGENTHALER:

That's right, at least on my father's side. My uncle Louis, I am sure,
would have been against Kefauver. Now my father was pretty independent
of my Uncle Louis. But I would suspect that Uncle Louis probably always
voted with Crump. Uncle Walter was, on the other hand, identified more
with the Tennessean, which was against Crump. He had
come up with the
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Tennessean and he would have identified with Luke Lea
and later with Silliman Evans and the anti-Crump forces. His brother
would have been the son-in-law of Crump's agent in Nashville. But both
Uncle Walter and my father were almost apolitical. Uncle Walter
identified with Colonel Lee, who owned the newspaper before Silliman
Evans. He identified with Colonel Lee and against Jimmy Stahlman.
Really, the added split in Tennessee politics was inside the Democratic
party and was a prohibition versus anti-prohibition split. Colonel Lee
identified very strongly with the drys, although he was a wet. And his
editor, Edward Ward Carmack, a former United States Senator, was
murdered on the street in downtown Nashville. The wet forces identified
with Crump and the dry forces‚ÄîLea and Carmack‚Äîwere anti-Crump. Wet and
dry didn't mean a damn thing philosophically, or in any way except
politically. Well, my uncle Walter came up on the dry side, with the
anti-Crump forces. That's the uncle who was with the newspaper. The
other uncle, Louis, was the son-in-law of Crump's man in town, so there
was that dichotomy of interests within the family. And I suspect that my
father was probably caught in the middle. And he went about his
contracting business and didn't give a damn one way or the other.